Weeping Angel
by TheDarkFlygon
Summary: As proud as she is of her ability to mostly prevent her emotions for taking over her when she assists operating on a patient or dealing with stressful situations, there is one time where Angie really thought the world was out to get her and extract out of her unwanted tears. Stressed, anxious and terrified, everything is there for disaster... or is it?


Angie _didn't_ cry.

A professional needed to keep their emotions to themselves. One of the first lessons a nurse learns is not to get her feelings overwhelm her to the point of being unresponsive, if not useless, in the line of medicine and saving lives. The stress coming with the vocation of saving lives was natural and almost coming with any important positions, making it so the surgeon and their assistant had to always be sharp, focused and keen. Emotions disturbed the process by making one more vulnerable to outside elements and their own psyche. However, no mistake was allowed, in the OR, and she knew that perfectly.

Well, "perfectly" may have been an overstatement.

In all truths, Angie had let herself get consumed by her feelings once before. It was in a darker time, in more sombre settings in her life, readjusting to a new life and social circle. She had panicked because, for the first time, someone's life was in her hands, yet her hands couldn't do anything about it because her mind had blanked as soon as she saw the patient flatlining. He had saved the man's life and her job, back there, had extracted her from the depths of her streams of consciousness overflowing from their beds.

Angie was rather obsessed with trying not to cry, she supposed. From a young age, seeing her father leave her mother and her behind with no given motive or reason had broken her heart, a gesture that must have had an impact somewhere in her want to look invulnerable, unbreakable. She had fixed herself with time, discovering where her father had gone and what he had been up to, his want to repent himself having somewhat comforted her into believing in the world again. Perhaps that fix had been a bad idea, in hindsight, as it was now her biggest flaw as an individual who saved lives daily.

Despite having that obsession with never crying, her emotions usually got the better of her. If she was angry, she'd act upon it, sometimes yell and more often than not for bad reasons or too harshly for the situation. If she was nervous, she'd lash out more easily, no matter the reason. If she was happy, she'd be grinning and more tolerant, even with the dashes of impatience she'd sometimes experience. She was born too emotional, she'd suppose, but she had also trained herself to be able to endure stress, anxiety and fear, how to get over herself and focus on what was for the greater good.

With the GUILT worldwide crisis hitting the USA and later on the rest of the planet, Angie had to strengthen her grip over her own feelings even further, to the point of pretending to herself that she was almost a robot, someone programmed not to feel anything that wasn't related to a surgery or any procedure. It had mostly succeeded until they had arrived in Europe, having even powered through her father almost dying on the doctor she had been assigned to and her in a Delphi facility. She had gained pride in her growing ability to master her impulses and overcoming the biggest obstacles…

…a pride she was currently gulping down, hard.

Everything about that day of early spring in England had made her want to cry. Everything was against her. Everything had tried to rip her away from what made her happy and proud to be who she was. Everything had gone wrong in the span of instants, of eyes beating, right under the noses of everyone around her. Everything in the world had tried hurting everything and everyone she had ever loved, in a way, but this day took the cake. Everything had turned against her today. _Everything_.

She knew whining to herself – cry pity upon herself – was as useless as trying to save someone from blood loss with a piece of bread to absorb the haemorrhage. The only thing she could do to fix anything to a drastic situation wasn't even direct, yet still remained in her hands, her skills, her experience not as a person but as a nurse: assist someone who could handle the task of saving someone from the sharpest claws of death, the trap humanity had set upon itself in Greek letters from days long gone.

In short, she was _useless_ for the time being.

First flap of a butterfly's wings: how had she not seen it coming? Every single aspect of the Tetarti patient had looked wrong at best and utterly suspicious at worse. A specifically contagious case of Tetarti? How could that doctor have been so sure about that? How could he have been right of that, how could have something like that slipped from everyone's vigilance and carefulness? That hadn't made sense from square one and yet she, someone who claimed to have sharp eyes and to have a never-ceasing attention paid to detail, hadn't suspected anything!

The signs kept showing up, more and more, until her own throat had been strangled by her doubts, worries and concerns. At first, it had been for the patient: despite the number of cases of GUILT they had treated together, the spectre of the late Mr Anderson still floated on her mind as she thought to herself "never again". Failure was still and had always been a possibility. However, her eyes had quickly shifted to Derek and how… weird he seemed. It was as if, as soon as the operation had begun, his own attention span had decreased and, by the end of the procedure, she almost prayed for him not to stab the serum blindly into the patient's liver, noticing his hands trembling more and more as minutes flew by.

Second sign: Derek, in his entirety.

Sure, they had been colleague for the great time span of a year. That wasn't much, all things considered, but when you fought against a worldwide menace trying to claim hundreds if not thousands of lives daily, you were bound to create strong bonds with the people you spent almost each of your conscious moments with. She'd evidently feel close to the man she had assisted throughout so much operations, cases and life stories they had allowed to continue for days, weeks, months, years longer. She didn't see herself without him, at least not for a while, not when that quest for global health hadn't been fully completed.

She couldn't bear to lose him or even consider the risk of such a thing. Her mind had been so set on the fact they'd always be all right that, as soon as he showed signs of fatigue or coming down with something on that operation, seeming more and more disoriented until he'd reply with a considerable jetlag, she internally panicked and there went her first want to cry. She was worried and it only worsened when, seemingly out of nowhere, his hand had started clawing into his chest and he had emitted a cry of pain, struggling to breathe properly as he collapsed to the ground for the second time since they had known each other.

To that, more tears threatened to spill out from her eyes.

Third time: the diagnostic. The situation had been tensed and, like every time she was tense, Angie felt the urge to cry, let out some of her growing anxiety. Compared to the predicament she had found herself suddenly thrown in, every single other stress she had experienced on the GUILT scene was nothing, everything felt different and threatening to touch. A thousand negative questions pestered her mind: what if the procedure failed? What if it was too much strain on Derek's body and that it'd give out? What if it was some kind of new strain of GUILT they had never heard from?

The diagnosis hadn't failed to provide her with more reasons to cry. One could even say with iron certainty that it had made it even worse. In the past year, Derek and she had never operated on more than one strain of Delphi's favourite bioweapon at the same time. While Dr Kimishima seemed far less anxious than she was, almost as if she had gone through that kind of procedure before, Angie was losing the ground under her feet: how was one supposed to deal with _that_? What if one of the strains went rogue and that it was too late to fight it? She wanted to cry already: seeing the two different patterns draw themselves on the chiral test simply was one more stab in her chest bleeding in worry all over the place.

Despite her best efforts to stop them, the tears exited when she heard what the two strains were and where they happened to be festering: Kyriaki, Paraskevi, the heart. The symbolism behind the infection was a sick joke all in itself, obviously, but the risk was there. Paraskevi was a one-hit death arrow on that zone, unlike all other operations on it they had treated before. They had fought against it flowing to the heart of their patients, and yet she couldn't have done anything to stop the worm from reaching her dearest friend's most vital organ. Something was off, something was wrong, but she managed to keep herself together as much as possible as Naomi told her to calm down. Words of wisdom went through her head at last, reminding her to stabilize herself at once.

The procedure in itself was tense. No error would be spared on Dr Kimishima's behalf, making Angie go back as much as possible to her robotic mode. Tool after tool, she checked the vitals, subconsciously filling a syringe with stabilizer every time she saw the numbers on their screen drop significantly, afraid 50 would turn into a 0 before they'd know it. No tear was allowed in the operating room, so she kept them all to herself, vision blurring slightly at times, but never failing her. She was too tense to let herself go from the reflexes keeping Derek in the realm of the living until something'd go terribly, terribly wrong.

By the time Naomi sutured the last Kyriaki slash and closed the patient's torso, Angie wasn't sure if she was still technically human. All her emotions made sure to crash back on her like a tall wave on an unsuspecting beach when the wound was closed and a gurney had left the room. Sniffling pathetically as the last patient of the day left the room, taking down her mask but still biting her lip in a hope not to melt into tears on the spot, she still thought she had words to say before she could allow herself to cry in the private jurisdiction of Derek's very-much-unexpected temporary bedroom.

"…Thank you… (Her voice sounded terrible, as expected, full of sorrow and trembling in her vocal cords). Naomi."

She barely lifted her eyes to see the surgeon smirk gently.

"I was just doing my job; no need to thank me."

Her expression did change to something more emphatic, if not sympathetic, as she seemed to study the nurse's face and body expressions, cancelling Angie's efforts to look presentable and not shed all the tears she had stored inside of herself for too long, rubbing her eyes as if that was going to make anything better.

"…But, why would you want to hide your tears from him?"

Naomi's voice had shifted to what sounded like genuine concern and curiosity, all the while she eyed the door to the OR.

"You think he doesn't already know? The man deserves to know how you feel."

In a way, Naomi was right. For how close they were, Angie had never fully allowed to express what she thought in front of Derek, even if it was in private, and that pained her to realize. He wasn't just anyone, far from it… but, on another hand, did she really want him to see how ugly she was when she cried? Did she wanted anyone to see her cry? Of course not, but nobody does. It was this strange paradox of feeling comfortable enough to cry in front of someone, but never allowing oneself to do it because of shame or not wanting to show one's weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Moreover, did he really need to see that when he'd be recovering from almost dying to two dangerous parasites sitting on his heart for who knew how long? Asking herself the question, she still made her way to his room, keeping the water from dripping to the floor as much as possible, albeit her hiccups betrayed her enough for the local nurses passing by in the corridors to turn their heads to her in confusion or concern.

In the end, she crashed in a chair put at the side of her dearest friend's bed as she realized the phrase "dearest friend" didn't quite fit him anymore. Her chest heaving, Angie looked at the man sleeping through her worries and the noise of the outside world, wondering what could have happened would Naomi not have been there, would have they failed; but her brain locked itself and stopped providing her with information she thought she desperately needed despite the interrogations constantly nagging at her brain.

In a moment where she allowed herself to show her weaknesses in front of him, Angie cried in fear, anxiety, stress and relief all at once, because nobody would see her cry except for herself.


End file.
